Editing by Elizabeth

April 19, 2011

Wrecker by Summer Wood

Love You More by Lisa Gardner He seemed to need to feel his body collide with the physical world to know he existed. – Wrecker

The child came into the world in a San Francisco city park, born to an unmarried hippie mother who didn’t even bother naming him for a year. When the boy shows a talent, even at such a young age, for being disruptive and getting into things he shouldn’t his mother, Lisa Fay, finally decides on a name for him: Wrecker. With a start like that, it’s no wonder life ends up being an uphill battle for the boy.

Unprepared for dealing with a child, especially after Wrecker’s father exists stage left, Lisa gets caught up in drugs, eventually leading to her involvement in a crime that lands her in prison looking at a 30 year stretch. So, at the ripe old age of three Wrecker enters the California foster care system, bouncing around a bit until his uncle, Len, is located in the Mattole River Valley of Humboldt County in upstate California and agrees to take the boy in.

Already caring for a wife debilitated by the effects of an infection that attacked her brain, Len quickly realizes he is in no position to keep up with Wrecker. Enter the residents of Bow Farm, a small community of four individuals who live just up the road from Len. Used to chipping in to help Len care for his wife, they agree to temporarily take in Wrecker until Len can arrange to take him back to child welfare in San Francisco. Temporarily turns into seventeen years, as we follow Wrecker from age three to twenty and watch how the ragtag Bow Farm community helps shape him into a strong young man, and how he brings them all together in a way they couldn’t possibly have foreseen when they first agreed to watch the wild child known as Wrecker. →

April 15, 2011

Beautiful, Naked & Dead by Josh Stallings

“I guess the truth is, there’s only so much you can let pass, then you start drawing the line. Don’t draw the line somewhere, it all turns to shit.” – Moses McGuire

Moses McGuire knows a thing or two about life going to shit. Forty-three years old, he wakes up every day with a decision to make: go to his job as a bouncer at a strip club, or kill himself? The job at the strip club is relatively new, he got that shortly after being released from prison, but the thoughts of suicide aren’t. In fact, as Moses recalls it he was six years old the first time the thought seriously crossed his mind.

Somehow he made it another thirty-seven years down a rugged-ass road without topping himself, but not without hitting a few major potholes along the way. Medically discharged from the marines for “almost constant drinking and general insanity,” Moses has served time, picked up more than his share of battle scars from bar fights, is in debt to his ex-wife and his bookie, and has been cut off by his dealer for passing a bad check. (“Hell, what kind of dealer takes checks anyway?”) That suicide option looks better every morning.

And the morning we meet him at the start of Beautiful, Naked & Dead may well have been the day, until Moses gets a phone call from one of the girls at the strip club asking for his help. Not just any girl, actually, but the one person in the world Moses considers a friend. When she doesn’t show for their scheduled meeting Moses goes to her apartment, where he finds she’s been brutally tortured and murdered. The one good thing in his life having been taken from him, there’s going to be Hell to pay for those responsible, as well as anyone foolish enough to get in his way. →

April 12, 2011

Dead Man’s Eye by Shaun Jeffrey

Maybe there was something worse than darkness.
– Joanna Raines

Joanna Raines used to think there was nothing worse than darkness. What else would a young, aspiring professional photographer think when they begin losing their vision to Fuchs corneal dystrophy? Distraught that the chance to pursue her dream is slipping away, Joanna undergoes a corneal transplant in one eye in hopes that will restore her vision. If all goes well, she’ll have the other eye done too.

While waiting on a train platform on her way to a follow up visit with her physician, Joanna witnesses a horrific accident when a man falls in front of the train and has one of his arms torn off. While the man is down, apparently dead, Joanna sees a dark shadow envelop him, seeming to enter his body through the stump of the ravaged arm. As the shadow dissipates the man jerks back to consciousness, not only alive but far more calm and upbeat than anyone has a right to be having just lost an arm to a train.

Joanna tries to convince herself what she saw was merely a trick of lighting, or perhaps something amiss from the operation. When her doctor removes a tiny stitch that had been irritating her eye and affecting her vision Joanna is satisfied that was the problem. That is until upon exiting his office, located within a hospital, she sees the man from the train platform being wheeled past her in the hallway and, despite the bright lights of the hospital, he is still shrouded in the menacing black shadow.

When the shadowy vision persists not only with the man from the train but begins appearing around other people, people who all seem intent on doing her harm, Joanna slowly comes to the disturbing realization she is seeing something very real, but which others cannot. She is seeing pure evil. →

April 11, 2011

The Shame of What We Are by Sam Gridley

The Shame of What We Are by Sam Gridley He had the sensation of having been lost so many times it was a dream he never escaped. – Art Dennison

We first meet Art Dennison as a four-year-old living with his family in Camden, New Jersey in the summer of 1951, and over the course of twelve interconnected short stories The Shame of What We Are follows Art through to age seventeen and high school graduation.

As we look in on Art in those twelve snapshots of his life we are treated to an intimate peek into the mind of a sensitive, intelligent boy who struggles to cope with life-altering events such as a cross-country move, his parents’ divorce, his mother’s mental breakdown, and his own journey from overwhelmed and insecure to on the cusp of grasping the confidence needed for his burgeoning independence.

Along the way author Sam Gridley skillfully interweaves details about both pop culture (America’s burgeoning addiction to television, for example) and world events (the launch of Sputnik, desegregation) that make the 1950’s setting come alive in a wonderfully vivid manner. To that end, the dozen or so illustrations by artist Tom Jackson which are included marvelously capture the essence of the stories, helping bring them even further to life. →

April 08, 2011

Little Girl Gone by Brett Battles

“Hit ’em fast, and hit ’em hard. Don’t ever give them a chance” – Carl Stone

Had Logan Harper known just how non-routine his routine morning stop for coffee on the way to work was going to turn out he may well have stayed in bed. Surprised to find the shop still closed, Logan goes around to the back entrance and finds the owner, Tun “Tooney” Myat, beaten, on his knees, a gun to his head, one short trigger pull away from being murdered.

Logan, an ex-military man now working as a mechanic, uses his not entirely rusty skills to run the would be murderer off and calls his father, Tooney’s longtime friend, to come to the shop and help Tooney while Logan gives chase. After losing the assailant during a car chase, Logan rendezvous with Tooney and his father at the hospital, where he finds the two men are not alone.

Their group of friends – who affectionately call themselves the Wise Ass Old Men, or WAMO (yes, they know the M and O are reversed, thank you very much) – have put in an appearance. Not only that, but they are lying to medical personnel, claiming Tooney’s injuries are the result of a mugging. Despite Logan’s pleas to the contrary, Tooney insists the police not be called. When the WAMO crew stands behind Tooney’s decision, Logan demands to be told why they are so opposed to the idea. →

April 06, 2011

The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes by Marcus Sakey (iPod Giveaway)

A man wakes up naked and cold, half-drowned on an abandoned beach. The only sign of life for miles is an empty BMW. Inside the expensive car he finds clothes that fit perfectly, shoes for his tattered feet, a Rolex, and a bank envelope stuffed with cash and an auto registration in the name of Daniel Hayes, resident of Malibu, California.
None of it is familiar.

What is he doing here? How did he get into the ocean? Is he Daniel Hayes, and if so, why doesn’t he remember? While he searches for answers, the world searches for him-beginning with the police that kick in the door of his dingy motel, with guns drawn. Lost, alone, and on the run, the man who might be Daniel Hayes flees into the night.

All he remembers is a woman’s face, so he sets off for the only place he might find her. The fantasy of her becomes his home, his world, his hope. And maybe, just maybe, the way back to himself.

But that raises the most chilling question of all: What will he find when he gets there?

That’s the setup for The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes by Marcus Sakey, which will be released on June 9th. Intrigued? You should be. I’m about halfway through the book and I promise you it is every bit as exciting as it sounds. You know what else is exciting? Marcus Sakey is offering you a chance to win an iPod and the audiobook version of his novel The Amateurs if you pre-order The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes. →

April 05, 2011

The Silenced by Brett Battles

It wasn’t Quinn’s job to stand in judgment. He was only there to make the condemned disappear.

Jonathan Quinn is a professional “cleaner,” which means it’s his job to makes things, usually bodies, disappear. It’s a crucial function, but one that usually allows Quinn and his crew to stay out of the direct line of fire since their job doesn’t begin until the operation they’ve been hired to clean up after has ended.

The Silenced, the fourth entry in the Quinn series (following The Cleaner, The Deceived, and Shadow of Betrayal), finds Quinn and his crew hired to handle a multi-operation job. First, there’s the matter of a long dead body in London a client wants removed from its resting place before the building serving as its tomb is demolished. Sounds simple enough.

And then there’s the matter of cleaning up after a few interconnected operations in several different locations in the U.S. A bit more involved, but still relatively straightforward. That is until while cleaning up after the first U.S. job someone else shows up at the job site, a remote location they shouldn’t have any idea even exits. Quinn follows the uninvited guest, a mysterious woman, back to her car and overhears her speaking Russian to a companion before they drive away.

When the same woman shows up again at a job clear across the country, and before the hit is even carried out this time, it becomes apparent there is another team working from the same list as Quinn and his client. Stranger still, the Russian woman and her team also appear to be interested in that dead body in London. Whose toes are Quinn inadvertently stepping on, and how far will they go to get Quinn out of their way? →

March 31, 2011

Shoes That Can Never Be Filled

Yesterday Spinetingler Magazine announced its nominees for the 2011 Dave Thompson Community Leader Award. To say I was shocked to wake up to posts and tweets congratulating me on my nomination is an understatement of epic proportions. It honestly wouldn’t have crossed my mind in a hundred years that Musings of an All Purpose Monkey would be in the running for such a meaningful award. And that’s not “aw, shucks” false modesty. That’s a fact. I was floored.

Even though I mentioned my nomination yesterday on Twitter and Facebook, I wanted to do so formally here on the blog today in order to pay tribute to the man the award is named after. If you’ve even dipped a toe in the crime fiction pool you are well aware of David Thompson. But for those who aren’t, David Thompson was a bookseller (Murder by the Book) and publisher (Busted Flush Press) who was a force of nature in his advocating of crime fiction books and authors. His love of crime fiction and the community surrounding it was deep, genuine, and contagious.

Tragically, David passed away unexpectedly last year. He was only 38. Spinetingler renamed the Community Leader Award in David’s honor. To get a true sense of the footprint David left on the crime fiction community visit Sarah Weinman’s blog, where she compiled a deservedly lengthy list of the tributes that poured out from every corner of the crime fiction community in David’s honor.

That the people at Spinetingler Magazine found my blog worthy of being nominated for an award named for David is both an honor and truly humbling. And I’m rubbing elbows with some amazing people, all more than representative of the community spirit that exists amongst crime fiction readers and authors. I don’t care how clichéd it sounds, this truly is an honor just to be nominated. Thank you.

Spinetingler is also giving awards in several other categories, including: Best Short Story Collection, Best Anthology, Best Crime Comic/Graphic Novel, Best Cover, Best Novel: New Voice, Best Novel: Rising Star, Best Novel: Legend, and Best Mystery/Crime Fiction Press, Publisher or Imprint. Voting in all the award categories runs April 1st through April 30th.

March 29, 2011

Every Last One by Anna Quindlen

Every Last One by Anna Quindlen I know what the world wants: It wants me to heal. But to heal I would have to forget. – Mary Beth Latham

By all appearances the Latham family is a happy, successful, average American family. The father, Glen, has a thriving ophthalmology practice. Ruby, the oldest of three siblings, is a popular girl entering her senior year of high school.

Twins Alex and Max are freshmen; Alex a star at sports, Max more inclined to artistic endeavors. And overseeing the whole brood is Mary Beth, who somehow manages to keep both the family and a successful landscaping business on track. It’s snapshot of picture-perfect suburbia.

Except things aren’t perfect. Ruby announces, seemingly out of nowhere, that she is breaking up with her longtime boyfriend, a young man who has become like a member of the family. Even more concerning, Max slowly starts to withdraw. Concerned he is slipping into depression, Mary Beth focuses all her attention on helping him through his difficulties.

So complete is her focus on Max that Mary Beth never senses the storm gathering around the Latham family, and she’s completely blindsided by a devastating act of violence that forever changes their lives. →

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